Group work has been adopted as an important tool to support collaborative work in order to enhance
learning processes. There is a wealth of literature related to group performance and the impact of group composition
on group and individual performance. However, very few studies address the issue on how to automatically form
groups. This article proposes a methodology that could be used by professors to form groups automatically taking
into account different criteria as well as the students’ profile. This methodology is based on a pilot study that
analyzes group composition of self-formed student groups.

Group work has been adopted as an important tool to support collaborative work in order to enhance learning
processes. There is a wealth of literature related to group performance and the impact of group composition on
group and individual performance. However, very few studies address the issue on how to automatically form
groups. This article proposes a methodology that could be used by professors to form groups automatically
taking into account different criteria as well as the students’ profile. This methodology is based on a pilot
study that analyzes group composition of self-formed student groups. The pilot study findings suggest that
students tend to form homogeneous group in terms of level of the knowledge. Furthermore, students report
that working on common topics of interests was a decisive factor in forming the groups.